"I'm tellin' ya, if I have to eat one more slimy fish, I'm gonna be sick. I can only hope this hunt will go smoother than last week."

"It will, long as everyone does their piece, doesn't waste any more ammo than we need to."

"Here we go again. Do ya'll hear this? My God, will you let it go already?"

"All I'm sayin' is, it was my arrow what killed that buck before mister trigger finger over here had to go blast everything to pieces."

"I've said it before and I'll say it again. Nothing kills something like a bullet to the brain. You didn't kill nothing."

"That's bull! You can't kill something that's already dead from an arrow to the heart, dumbass. And you can't claim something that's already-"

"Len, man, cut it out. We're coming up on shore."

Sure enough, they were coming up on the pier near that old falling-down cabin with the ramshackle tree house in the back.

They took the smaller boat today since it was just a hunting and scavenging trip.

First they would wander the woods a bit, hope for some deer, squirrels, rabbits, anything really, then hole up in the tree house till morning. Then it'd be off again, probably hit the lakeshore restaurants and resorts further north.

If they found too much stuff, or killed too many corpses in an area they wanted to keep clear, they'd head back and fetch the big pontoon boat to do the heavy lifting.

Lou put the engine in idle and turned the rudder, aiming to coast them right up to the rotting pylons.

He wiped the sweat from his brow even though it was still early morning and late fall. He wasn't an athlete by any stretch of the term, but Lou pulled his weight, kept his head down.

It was a rough group, this bunch of guys, but Lou couldn't exactly pick and choose his friends these days. It was like Joe was always saying, take what you need and don't lie or cheat, and everyone lives to fight another day.

Lou didn't know if he was particularly better suited to this world than the old. Still, he played by the rules, stayed out of Len and Tony's perpetual bickering, claimed only what he needed to get by, and it seemed to work out well enough.

Even when the hunger got bad, or when they were stuck on the road for weeks, even months at a time, Lou never missed the old days. He wasn't the sentimental type. Never had been. There wasn't all that much to miss anyway.

When Cynthia got the house and the kids in the divorce, he didn't stick around to torture himself over something that had been broken from the start. He got on a greyhound bus and headed for...Lou didn't remember where he'd been headed to, but he ended up in a small nowhere town in Georgia. When the construction jobs dried up he would work as a bouncer at the local bar, place bets on the amateur boxers, even ran moonshine a few times.

None of that mattered any more. Maybe it was better, start over fresh where nobody else cares about who you used to be. Like Joe said the first time Lou met him, men like us, this is the world we belong in. We're in charge of our own lives now.

Lou cut the engine, letting the fishing boat drift.

Joe had his hand up to shield against the glare off the water, peering towards the trees like he saw something already. Lou checked his Uzi again, slung the strap over his shoulder, keeping one hand on the rudder bar.

They heard it before they saw it.

There were dead ones, a lot of them, definitely more than the men could make out from their position at the shore, gathered together a little ways into the forest.

"Aw man, they're at the tree house, aren't they?" Len spoke in low tones.

"What happened, they chase a coon up a tree or somethin'?" Tony hypothesized.

"No, there must be somebody holed up in there," Joe reasoned, "There's no way a little raccoon would attract that much attention. There's somebody up in our tree house."

"What are we gonna do about it?" Len wondered, gripping his bow tighter.

"Could just leave, wait it out," Tony said, "If someone's up there, they're done for. Got no escape, herd like that waiting for 'em. We'll just wait for them to die, let the dead ones wander off, come back later."

"No," Joe said decisively, "It could be weeks or months before they disperse and meanwhile clear out what little game is left around here. Whoever is up there didn't survive this long on dumb luck. It's worth it to see who they are."

"I ain't risking my neck for some shmuck got himself treed," Len muttered, looking back over his shoulder to the open lake wistfully.

"No," Joe repeated, "Way things are going, we can't ignore anybody who could be useful. And if they ain't useful, then that's their problem. We've got more than enough ammo to get this job done, one way or the other. We're doing it."

Tony nodded reluctantly. Len glared but didn't say anything, which pretty much amounted to assent. Lou nodded, checked his spare magazine.

Joe laid out the plan.

"Lou, go and set up the 50 cal. over there, see where it's mostly clear straight on up to the cabin, a couple yards from shore. Be quick about it. Rest of us, we'll go pick off some corpses, get the rest to follow us across the opening where you got a clean line of sight there," Joe motioned to the area he was talking about, then pointed at Lou, "wait for my signal and you light 'em up!"

"We'll circle back around behind our gunman and help pick off the rest. Easy," Joe finished.

Tony helped Lou set up the tripod and secure the heavy gun. With several open boxes of ammo on the ground beside him, Lou checked the sight, the feed, swiveled the gun to check his range. Good to go.

He gave Joe a thumbs-up and watched his companions spread out into the forest.

Soon gunshots rang through the early morning.

Lou waited. He heard more shots and some yells. Was that the signal? No, not yet.

Waiting was always the worst part. Lou took a deep breath to calm his nerves.

He saw figures approaching through the trees, from the direction of the tree house, all of them dead men. Joe, Tony, and Len were nowhere in sight.

The dead were coming closer, headed right towards Lou, not across in front of him like the plan said. He hesitated to shoot. The last thing he wanted to do was shoot one of his men by accident. There were still the sounds of gunshots and fighting coming from deeper in the woods.

BAM!

Lou fired one round, blowing a corpse's head clear off its shoulders. If Joe and the others were still alive, they would hear that and know what's coming. The plan was already a disaster.

He waited about five seconds then fired a second warning shot, then counted to ten and figured that was enough time for anyone who could to either hit the ground or hide behind a tree or something.

BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!!!!

Lou felt a rush of adrenaline as the machine gun rattled through round after round. He sprayed bullets through the forest. Corpses fell and splinters flew from tree trunks. The first chain of bullets went quickly, but it was enough to cut down a lot of dead men.

Fumbling to reload, Lou realized what must have happened. There must have been even more dead ones than Joe had counted on. Even if they had gotten some to follow them away, others must have split off in the confusion and ended up heading straight for Lou's position.

Now they were all headed for him, called like children to the dinner bell.

BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!!!!

The machine gun swung back and forth, ripping dead men apart. The trick, Lou had learned weeks ago when they first found this gun, was not to waste time aiming for the heads. The 50 cal. was not for precision. It was for stopping force.

Things were going well. He reloaded a third time and fired again, pushing back another wave. Lou figured he had cut down upwards of fifty, maybe seventy corpses. All around him, the dead were crawling, moaning, staggering over each other.

His heart was racing, sweat dripping into his already stinging eyes, and yet more dead came walking through the trees, coming from all directions now.

Maybe this was what it had been like for his grandfather, when he stormed the beaches of Normandy. The enemy was closing in, relentless. He would probably never again see the men he had lived with for the past months. If he lived now, it was up to chance.

There were too many corpses. Lou swiveled the gun and fired into a group of corpses to his left, but they were getting too close, it was hard to aim.

BAMBAMBAMBA-silence

The gun jammed. Lou hit it, shook it, tried half-heartedly to fix the problem but he couldn't see through his panic. He didn't know how to fix it; he only knew how to shoot it.

"GRAAAUH!"

A corpse lunged at him from behind. Lou jumped out of the way, nearly tripping over the ammo boxes at his feet. He grabbed his Uzi and shot the dead man.

He couldn't make it back to the boat. Lou ran, pushing and shooting his way through the remaining dead. There were fewer now, but they were scattered all over, and too many for him to stay there.

As he ran, there were a few shots still ringing out. Somebody was still alive but he didn't know who or where. On he ran.

Lou slowed down, bent over and rested his hands on his knees for a moment, trying to catch his breath. Something moving caught his eye. He saw a man walk around the side of a large tree.

He was limping, moving like he was hurt, but it was definitely a man, not a corpse. The man wore dark jeans and a dirty windbreaker. He had brown hair, a scruffy beard, and sharp blue eyes.

Those were the eyes of a killer. Lou could tell by how a man met his eyes if he was a killer or if he was still alive by dumb luck.

This time, though, Lou read something new in the man's eyes, something he'd never seen before. He didn't know how he knew, but he suddenly knew that this man was going to kill him.

The certainty of that knowledge stunned him.

The man lunged forward and shoved Lou hard in the chest before he could gather his senses and react. Lou stumbled backward, his gun clattered to the ground, then regained his balance and tackled the man.

Lou was not the type of man to go down without a fight. He'd only met his grandfather once, in the VA hospital, before he died. Lou was little then, but he remembered the old man's words, Don't ever give up. No matter what. They were simple words, sure, but they counted.

He fought hard, tried desperately to get the upper hand, to break the man's grip, tried to reach for his fallen gun. The man grabbed it first, got the strap around Lou's neck. They both slid to the ground, both seeming to use the last of their strength, but the other man held on to life just a little bit tighter.

As the darkness closed in around him, Lou could see the early autumn leaves fluttering over the blue sky, late morning light shining through, and the colors fading away in blotches.

Well, it's as good a day as any.